Brandon Smith (Redwoodtwig)

0.2.2 The Missouri River

These images were taken along the Missouri river between Rocheport and Jefferson city, Missouri.
As an ecological factor, the river moves a very large amount of water along it's route, which passes less than a mile and half from the art garden forest. This means there is probably more water vapor hanging around to be captured by forested areas than there is further back from the river.
The river bottoms are often more than a mile wide and periodically the river floods into those bottoms, causing all the places where I took these images to be under water. The last really big one was in 1993.

On the way from Wilton to Hartsburg along the Missouri River Bottoms. Just harvested soy bean crop in the foreground, and the levee, trees, and the bluffs on the other side of the river in the middle background.
I wonder why the farmers left the solitary trees that show up alongside the road in many places. I'd think it would be more efficient to get rid of them.
On the other hand, they make good landmarks when everything else looks the same, miles of soybean or corn.
I suppose even the most effecient minded farmers do sometimes like to park next to a magnificent tree that has no commercial value for them, but is just a nice tree.

Along most of the river in the central part of Missouri, there are large flat rich farm lands on one side or both sides of the river. These bottom lands are covered in water during very wet years, though not for very long. I'm sure the silt deposited during floods has plenty of good soil stuff in it, along with excess chemicals (fertilizer and pesticides) that had washed off fields up river. Looking at these extensive fields of soybeans here, corn in other places, one must admire the efficiency of this monocrop use of these bottom lands. The farmers may not be getting rich, but the harvests from large operations like this are a significant part of our GDP.
Since the river is navigable the US Army's Corps of Engineers has the mission of regulating it, or trying to. Flood control, releases of water and so forth. Balancing farmer needs with ecological and natural processes that periodic flooding enhances.
More than normal traffic on this day, as seen from the dust trails, but these trails are tiny compared to the dust raised by the huge machines used to harvest these crops.

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